On Friday, December 9, I had dinner with the group at the Leonardo Plaza hotel – some of you know it as the Sheraton - in the center of Jerusalem. As I evaded stares (some puzzled, some derisive, some admiring) from ultra-orthodox hotel guests and waited for folks to finish washing their hands in preparation for Hamotzi, one of the waiters came over to me, lifted up two challot, put them together, handed them to me and said, “here, like this.” I couldn’t help but put my arm around him as we – and the whole group - shared a hearty laugh. I’ve been around Jewish life for a while now, but this was the first time I’ve ever been coached on how to say a brakha by an Arab.
It felt good to be back in Jerusalem last shabbat. For the first time in years, I remember what it’s like to really feel connected to the land and its people, its triumphs and its challenges. Questions about the meaning of history, the nature of the Hebrew language and Jewish culture, the purpose of mitzvot and the fabric of Jewish identity always resonate differently for me in Israel than in the United States. It was also energizing to watch my traveling companions experience moments of insight and kinship and find themselves immeasurably enriched by the air of the Land of Israel. I returned with more questions than answers.
I designed the trip around the theme of coexistence, asking, “How do people who are different live as neighbors?” We looked at as many facets of diversity as we could, some I anticipated and others I did not: Jews and Arabs; Jews, Muslims and Christians; immigrants and native-born Israelis; religious and secular; Orthodox, Masorti and Progressive; rich and poor; left, right and in between; Muslim and Bahai; Palestinian Arabs, Israeli Arabs, Jerusalem Arabs and Palestinians who hold Israeli passports… all of whom, in some cases, might belong to the same family; Israeli settlers and Palestinian laborers; ethnic Jordanians, Bedouin and Palestinian refugees; Jordanians and Israelis; residents, pilgrims and tourists. We explored this theme not only in the present moment but also throughout history. A visit to the Atlit refugee camp from the 1940’s allowed us to explore coexistence during the British Mandate, and a stop at Tsippori revealed a mosaic synagogue floor from the first century with Hebrew lettering, Greek lettering, a representation of the Zodiac, figures of humans and animals, representations of biblical stories and donor inscriptions in at least two languages.
Among Yehuda Amichai’s poems is a piece set on the Yom Kippur immediately following the Six Day War. The Hebrew year was 5728 – oddly known by its Hebrew initials as sh’nat tashkach, the year of forgetting. He introduces us to the complexities of coexistence by sharing his half of a conversation that almost happened.
On Yom Kippur in 1967, the Year of Forgetting, I put on
My dark holiday clothes and walked to the Old City of Jerusalem.
For a long time I stood in front of an Arab’s hole-in-the-wall shop,
Not far from the Damascus Gate, a shop with
Buttons and zippers and spools of thread
In every color and snaps and buckles.
A rare light and many colors, like an open Ark.
I told him in my heart that my father too
Had a shop like this, with thread and buttons.
I explained to him in my heart about all the decades
And the causes and events, why I am now here
And my father’s shop was burned there and he is buried here.
When I finished it was time for the Closing of the Gates prayer.
He too lowered the shutters and locked the gate
And I returned, with all the worshippers, home.
(transl. Steven Mitchell)
The poem raises so many questions: Why is the speaker wearing dark clothes for Yom Kippur, and why is he worshipping at the ark of an Arab’s shop instead of in synagogue or at the newly opened kotel? How does his impression of the old Arab merchant connect with his memories of his father? Does time always run out, does the gate always close before we have the conversation? To what extent are our lives and identities and stories determined by circumstance, rather than being under our control? Why am I here, and not there? And what does it mean to be here?
This poem resonated for me not so much at the obvious moment – after walking through the Arab souk in the Christian Quarter – as in Jordan. It turned out that our guide, Rami, and I were the same age, having graduated from college the same year – I was in St. Louis studying religion and Hebrew, while he studied English in Baghdad. What brought me to Jordan with a group of American Jewish tourists was a conviction that it is important for us to experience Jordan firsthand – to hear about the challenges related to water and fuel shortages that are the same as the struggles we hear about in Israel; to understand the economic, political and social impact of the peace accord; to hear another angle on the Arab Spring, the repeated sabotage of the Egyptian natural gas pipeline and the repression in Syria; to explore another facet of Palestinian history; to discover how King Abdullah keeps a diverse population satisfied; and to show our support for a country that, against all odds, has chosen a path of practicality, peace and, though it will take a while to get there, prosperity. Investment from the Gulf States not pouring into Damascus, Beirut and Cairo is now flowing into Amman.
What brought Rami, our guide, to Jordan was simpler - birth to Jordanian parents. A religious Roman Catholic, Rami knew the book of Numbers as well as I do, and as we retraced in reverse order the steps of our ancestors wandering through the wilderness of Ammon, Moab and Edom, he described each stop using the language of the Bible. We spoke about what had once drawn me to study in Israel, to try to learn spoken Arabic and to travel in Jordan. We discussed why he had stayed in Jordan rather than taking a higher-paying job in Oman or Kuwait. We even began to plan his first visit to Israel, which he hopes to make within the next year or two, to visit holy sites and develop a better understanding of his clients and neighbors. I don’t know that we talked enough, but at least we began the conversation.
Diversity and coexistence are always multifaceted. Being around people who are different changes us, whether we like it or not. The basilican synagogue with Greco-Roman style mosaics, the hummus served on tables throughout Israel and the Arab waiter ready to coach a rabbi through hamotzi are, on some level, different faces of the same coin. Over the course of the trip, travelers’ ideas about the interlocking challenges and hopes had become markedly more grounded, nuanced and refined.
Yet our trip was not just an intellectual exploration of the nexus of politics, history, culture and identity. It was also a journey to the sacred. We stood on the hillside in Tzefat that once marked the boundary of the city, the otherwise undistinguished field where rabbis named Isaac Luria, Yosef Karo and Shlomo HaLevi Alkabetz would go out on Friday afternoon to greet the shabbat bride. We spent time in three holy cities, ascended the very same steps our ancestors would have climbed as they returned to Jerusalem on pilgrimage. We stood on paving stones laid more than 2000 years ago alongside the Temple Mount. With joy we climbed to the roof of the recently restored Hurva Synagogue, which towers over the Old City once again as it did before it was destroyed in 1948. We visited the renovated Yad VaShem, the Shoah Memorial that is not a Museum; it bears witness without requiring interpretation or meaning. And paying our respects at Har Herzl Cemetery gave us a sense of the sacrifice required to make Israel what it is today – I spend a lot of time in cemeteries, but this one is different - it is a graveyard full of children. And pushing one’s way through the shuk at midday among a throng of people madly preparing for shabbat is also a one-of-a-kind religious experience.
The itinerary challenged me to ask what it is that makes a place sacred? Is it God? A holy book? A people? A community? The kotel is one good example. The Orthodox establishment, for example, maintains a tight hold on the plaza in front of the kotel, enforcing certain norms of dress and behavior, separating the sexes and banning women from wearing tallitot and reading Torah. That plaza has been there only since 1967. But three feet to the north or south, along the same 2000-year-old wall, there are no such restrictions. The Southern Wall is an archaeological excavation, not a place that people treat as God’s mailbox, and the Eastern Wall is not visited at all. There’s a kotel, and then there’s a kotel.
I can note similar idiosyncrasies about Christian and Muslim holy sites we saw or visited – the now-debatable location of stages of the cross, the relatively recent replacement yet continuing veneration of some of the relics in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, the different ways people of various faiths treat the Temple Mount and what lies underneath it. To put it another way: It is clear that Jews approaching the kotel and Christians entering the Holy Sepulcher behave in much the same way… Christians visiting the Western Wall might be pilgrims, following in the footsteps of Jesus, but Jews visiting the Holy Sepulcher, as we did, are always tourists. For Christians, Israel is the Holy Land; for us, it’s the Promised Land. The difference is about more than word choice.
The sense of the holy is confined to place. An understanding of what is sacred to us, and sacred to others, underlies meaningful relationship. Jordanians, by and large, consider the peace with Israel sacred – it is something that cannot be called into question. Settlers postulate the holiness of every inch of the Land; some will resort to violence to protect their interests. Israeli society values human dignity, well beyond the limits of reason. There are those who find halakha as interpreted by their rabbi and their community infallible; there are others who put their trust in democracy, equality, law and basic freedoms as pathways to the transcendent. It’s important for us to know what is truly sacred and what is not and be able to talk about it. When we engage with neighbors who have a different understanding of what is holy, it behooves us to be aware, educated, creative and astute. We’re better off not making assumptions but instead engaging in conversation. What begins as a nothing more than stilted formal dialogue can become deeper, more authentic and more trusting over time.
The most inspiring moment on the trip for me came by way of B., the vice president of the travel agency that organized our trip, who joined us for our three days in Jordan. An American by birth who made aliyah with her husband and their children several years ago, B is a resident of Tekoa, a settlement between Jerusalem and Bethlehem. It was her first time traveling in an Arab country. Like many in the group, B. found the days in Jordan remarkably reassuring and comforting, as it became clear to all of us that Jordan has fully embraced its role as the quietest country in the Middle East. Jordan will not turn its back on its slowly burgeoning prosperity and violate the peace treaty with Israel. So, while riding on a horse on the way out of Petra, when the Bedouin horse driver asked her where she was from, B. responded honestly, “I’m from Israel.”
The Bedouin responded, “From Israel? Very good people.”
Curious, she replied, “Really? How so?”
Without missing a beat, the man responded, “My daughter was born blind in one eye. She went to Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem, and she came back able to see.”
This moment would not have happened were Hadassah Hospital not true to the highest ideals of the Jewish and Israeli people. It also would not have happened if we had not gone to Jordan to see and listen for ourselves. Similarly none of the insights participants gained from their trip would have happened had we not chosen to get on the flight and plant our feet in the gates of Jersualem, to witness and to connect with the land, country and people of Israel. What we learned will come to inform our speaking about and support of Israel in the Berkshires and beyond.
I’m ready for my next visit… who’s coming with me?
